Mongolian Madness

We're in Mongolia now, staying at a nice (but extremely hot - the heating cannot be turned off) guesthouse in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. We arrived here yesterday afternoon after a few days in Beijing. Before that we'd been in the Chinese cities of Xian and Datong.
Xian was great - a huge sprawling place but with an old city centre, still enclosed in the 14km long original walls (which we spent a pleasant afternoon circumabulating) and a hectic and very fragrant Muslim Quarter. The food was great for us: spicy veg kebabs, cold sesame noodles and flat breads stuffed with scrambled eggs and spring onions all on offer from the street stalls. We did a day trip to the Terracotta Army, about an hour outside Xian. The life size figures are mostly still in situ in the massive pits where they were buried centuries ago. They discovered the warriors nearly forty years ago, but have still only excavated around a third of the many thousands statues of soldiers and horses.
From Xian we caught an overnight train to the northern city of Datong. It's right in the heart of mining country, so the surrounding landscape is scarred and filthy. But we were visiting because of the amazing Yungang Caves, a series of 5th century Buddhist cavings located on the outskirts of town. They were spectacular, but whether they were worth two nights in a grotty hotel, and the double bus journey and walk down a dusty road to get to the site is highly questionable. The whole city has been turned into a construction site and the infrastructure for visitors simply doesn't exist. Still, we had Beijing next, which we knew was much more appealing.
In the two and a half days we were there, we squeezed in a visit to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. It was brilliant walking the very steep battlements as they snaked over the mountains. It did feel like we might get blown away by the wind at times though.
We caught the very early train from Beijing to Mongolia on Tuesday (11 May), an overnight ride through a desolate landscape, mainly the Gobi desert, complete with wandering camels near the tracks.
We've been out into the Mongolian countryside today, visiting the Terejl National Park. We did a few hikes over the rugged terrain and visited an amazing Buddhist monastery. The beams around the outside are painted with beautiful birds and landscapes on one side and gory pictures of hell on the other, all in super bright technicolour. The old Mongolian who worked there took great pleasure in pointing out the most gruesome scenes.
We've got one more day in Mongolia before we return to Russia. We'll spend a week around Irkutsk and the world's deepest lake, Baikal, before heading to Tomsk on the Siberian plains and then back to Moscow. Hopefully the bright sunny weather with stay with us.